| Courtesy: buzzfeed.com |
Today’s Prompt:
Write about
the number 7
Word Count: 1,405
Her lane advances at a crawl.
She pulls up to the bumper of
the Range Rover, turns off the
ignition and weighs her options.
She knows she’s had an almost
picturesque escapade with the number seven. Her father passed away when she
turned seven, no fault of hers. She was the seventh daughter in the family. Not
the seventh child, her eldest brother made sure that wasn’t ever gonna happen.
But between him and her were six sisters scattered to hell or heaven, depending
on which angle you approach the issue, and that made Anibiet (/annie bate/) the
eighth child but daughter number seven. It made her feel special and that was a
given.
Anibiet grew up into an
adventurous woman who had a man of her own. The man she married happened to be the
seventh and in this case, only surviving son of his side of the family. She got
seven cute people in her life that she absolutely adores and cares for. First on
the list is her mama, her husband is next in line and on his heels, her three
cute kids and that ought to bring the list to five. Six is her best friend and bringing
up the rear is her pet cat, Offiong (/off young/) the Ibibio word for moon. If that ain’t a weird name for a
cat. That cat is the reason this
story has got to be told.
Anibiet makes her return trip
from the mall where she has been to procure seven items. But before we take a
look at her grocery list—she has it tucked away somewhere in the glove
compartment, by the way—let’s step back into her past and have a long, hard
look at her life.
Her place is just down the
street. If you count up, you should be right on top of it the minute you hit the
seventh house, assuming you did your tallying from this side of the
intersection, that is. Apparently, that means, you’ll have to skip the
undeveloped plot between the third and fourth structure and the psychedelic
shack over there which doubles as a shrine for lunatics. Now before you start
asking why the stuck with woman gatto be so damn perfect like you didn’t know
what the digit we’re discussing stood for; Anibiet has got a temper on her.
Sometimes, I think she scares the hell out of the devil. It eventually undid
her. Do not go flying off half-cocked without hearing what she has to say for
herself.
She’s been working her butt off
to keep that rage of hers in check. No anger management for this one; she’ll
probably pulverize her shrink before you say Django!
“Hey, Obong,” (try saying Oblong without the ‘L’) This
happened just before she hit the road on her way to the mall. “I gatto run. I
need to get stuff at the mall.”
“‘kay, hon. don’t stay too long.”
“It’s only gonna take a minute there’s stuff I need
to fetch then I’ll be back.”
She walks to the door turns around
like she forgot something, her husband is already back to watching the TV and
doesn’t notice.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” She says.
“Yeah, sure why not?”
“You still remember the circumstances surrounding how
Offiong dropped into our lives?”
“How could I forget? You never let me hear the end of
it. You found the cat at the backyard stuck between the brush on July 7, two
double oh seven. At first you presumed it was just playing and would probably
return home soon enough. But you made to go inside the house and the cat caterwauled
shrilly that for one minute you thought maybe, a bigger animal had dug its
teeth into the poor fellow’s fur. Of course, you got scared and almost jumped
out of your skin. When you recovered from the initial shock, you walked up to
the thing back then it was a kitty. It had spots on its fur about seven by
count. You used to call what you felt for Offiong a temptation thing though for the life of me I’ve never understood
why.”
“A ‘The
Temptations’ thing and that’s because they have a song that says ‘Love can be anything. Can’t nothing be love
but love.’ It had a lot to do with the fiery passion that consumed me for
Offiong. I couldn’t help what I felt,” she says then falls silent.
The couple look into each other’s
eyes for a moment and the tension reacts with the atoms in the air producing a
reaction. Obong senses Anibiet’s unease, feels there is a load she is struggling
to get off her chest but does not know how to help her.
“Is there something else you wanted to tell me?” He
prodded.
“No.” In a way, she was in a world of her own.
Totally distracted. “No, nothing else,” she lies. “I gatto run see you soon.”
And she rushes out into the strong morning light which does nothing to brighten
the darkness she feels within her soul.
Sitting behind the wheel of her
Honda Civic, she calls up her mama. She answers on the first ring.
“Hello, mama.”
“Hey, Anibiet.”
“I’ve been going through some things, lately.”
“Where are you? Are you alright?”
“Fine, mama. I’ve been having strange nightmares.”
“What nightmares? Obong never called…”
“That’s because I never told him, mama.”
“There’s something I need to tall you, mama. It’s
important. I think my life depends on it?”
“Who is this and what have you done with my
daughter?”
“It’s me, mama; it’s Anibiet. Just listen up. This is
really serious and I believe if I told someone you especially it’s gonna be
alright. I don’t why I feel that way but I just feel it. So I really need you to listen up and don’t freak out when
I say this. Ok?”
Silence.
“Mama? Are you still there?”
Audible sigh.
“Mama, just speak up, I’m freaked out to the max as
it is.”
“I’m here, Anibiet. Sorry, but I wasn’t sure what to
think when I heard you bawl. It’s been a long time. The last time you came close
to tears was when Jonas, your boy broke an arm playing soccer.”
Her mama laughs and it’s the
sweetest sound Anibiet has heard in days since the nightmares started.
Anibiet spills her gut and
tells her mama about the ghosts of her childhood which has returned to haunt
her. She remembers hearing her father say ‘kill
a cat, get killed by a cat,’ and she weaves this into her story. Anibiet
strangled her eldest brother’s cat as a child. The cat tore her best dress to shreds.
Anibiet had taken the creature outside, stroking it gently as she went.
She came to the garden and stood where she was sure
the cat’s yowl will be out of earshot. She had one of her shoelaces in her hand
and she wrapped it around the cat’s neck and strangled it but not before
covering the head with polythene bag. She’d felt so much hatred for the thing
after what it did to her dress she’d practically lost control of her temper.
She stuffed it in a sack and dumped the creature in the trashcan. This was the
first time she had told anybody the story.
Her mother forgives Anibiet and
after the phone call, she does feel a lot better. She thinks, it’s really gonna be alright, again. Her
nightmares were beginning to gain a foothold in the physical realm. The last
time she saw Offiong in her dreams, it had swiped at her with it’s claws. That
morning, when she came awake, she had found a scratch on her forearm and
Offiong was curled up at the foot of her bed staring at her with callous eyes.
She pulls open the glove compartment, fetches the
grocery list, and ticks off the items:
A three-fold cord; a khaki
sack; a club; a machete; a gun; a cat (Offiong would fill that gap) and courage
(she would find that in herself).
The Range Rover ahead starts
rolling and she turns on the ignition and blends into the traffic. Anibiet tears
up the paper with the list on ‘em. She’s full of hope that when she gets home Offiong
wouldn’t be there waiting for her anymore. Yeah, she could almost count on
that.
Eneh
Akpan
June 23, 2013
